For this week's final Halloween movies list, I decided to turn hit up the real superstars: my co-workers here in the MTV Newsroom who keep this great ship moving every damn day. After the jump you'll find recommendations and reminiscences from around the office. If you're game for some heavy reading, make sure to check out the last write-up, detailing Joel Hanek's pick: "Ernest Scared Stupid." Oh yes, he went there.
As for myself (MTV Movies Blog editor Adam Rosenberg), it's a toss-up. To this day I still have occasional nightmares relating to "Candyman," the Bernard Rose-directed, Virginia Madsen-starring horror flick based on a tale by novelist Clive Barker. There's something uniquely terrifying about the Candyman's ability to attack at any time, day or night. When horror can touch you even in the relative safety of sunlight, that's something to fear.
The other one that still gets me, will always get me, is Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining." Forget about bears and desiccated corpses in bathtubs and crazy old Jack. Those red-headed twins scare the crap out of me.
Eric Ditzian
"Nightmare on Elm Street" stunned me, "Candyman" knocked me out. I still have not recovered. I'm just gonna say that any parents that let their 7-year-old child a) own a VHS copy of "Elm Street" and b) watch it in a dark basement with his friend Eric should c) be arrested. Christian P.'s folks, I'm looking your way! A couple years later, my delicate cinematic sensibilities had healed when I took in "Candyman." Cue the sweaty-pajama'd nightmares. All I remember is a lot of bees, a lot of blood and how, even to this day, I don't dare stare into a mirror and say that killer's name five times.
Joshua Horowitz
"The Exorcist" -- Without a doubt the scariest AND most compelling horror flick I've ever seen. I first saw this one on good old WPIX here in NYC. Even a bastardized PG-cut shook me to the core. Max Von Sydow?!? The guy that I found out later was Jason Patric's dad?!? Those frickin' nuns! THE perfect film for a scary night in.
Vanessa White Wolf
"In the Mouth of Madness" -- I really only know a few people who have seen it, but every single one of them agree that it's pretty terrifying. Kind of an ode to H.P. Lovecraft - it just really got under my skin.
"Event Horizon" -- I saw this movie only a few years ago and literally have no idea what happened in it. I actually blocked it out. As soon as I start remembering things - like eyes being gouged out? I immediately become like, catatonic. SO SCARY.
Tim Kash
"The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" -- The title says it all. The fact that it's shot like a grainy low budget documentary and based on real-life events makes it feel like a snuff movie. A little too real at times.
Akshay Bhansali
"Stephen King's It" -- I've always been made uneasy by the clown (editor's note: Tim Curry!). Call me crazy but there is something incredibly unnerving about a middle-aged, over-weight man with a smile painted on his face and particularly wide feet, speaking in a high inflection while twisting and squeaking a rubber balloon into some contortion of animal, or mode of transportation, or weapon. Add a pair of snarly teeth to the mix, and the dedication to hunt you down even in adulthood and you've got Pennywise, the hair raising clown demon at the heart of Stephen King's 'It.' For the entire summer of '91 I couldn't ride my bike alone after sundown.
Ashley Mastronardi
"House on Haunted Hill" (the original--not the remake) -- It's really scary because, a la "Paranormal Activity," it leaves a lot to the imagination. It's also shot in black & white, which makes it extra creepy.
Kyle Anderson
I'm a gigantic fan of the "Friday the 13th" series, because Jason Voorhees f---ing rules, and it's incredible the lengths that filmmakers (and Paramount) went to in order to keep milking that cash cow well past its slaughter date. I have many favorites: "Part 2" is probably the scariest, "Part VI: Jason Lives" is fantastically silly, "Part 8: Jason Takes Manhattan" is so utterly ridiculous it becomes sublime and "Freddy vs. Jason" is a fitting end for everybody's favorite hockey-masked momma's boy.
My favorite of all time (and thus the movie I watch every single Halloween) is "Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter." It was the fourth in the series, making the title completely absurd. It stars a very young Corey Feldman as kid who goes utterly ape at the sight of breasts and is obsessed with sci-fi make-up. Crispin Glover plays one of the murdered kids (in the most incredible scene in cinema history, he dances to try to woo a lady). It's got a great series of kills and a completely bats--t ending.
Still, it should be noted that my favorite "Friday the 13th" moment came in "Jason Takes Manhattan," when Mr. Voorhees squares off against a high school kid and takes his head off with one punch. The head then bounces off a building and lands in a dumpster. For most of the early part of my life, I assumed that that's what New York was like. I was a dumb kid.
Brian Jacks
In 1999 I paid to see "Wing Commander" in the theater. Six hours later, my dog was found raped.
Sabrina Weiss
Scariest movie I ever saw (at least the movie that scared me the most at the time when I saw it): Disney's "Watcher in the Woods" (1980).
I STILL have nightmares about it and get scared I'll see the reflection of a blindfolded girl if I come across a cracked mirror. And I think I last saw it in 1986. Yeah, I don't really watch scary movies anymore.
Deanna Caligiuri
My personal #1 scary movie when I was younger was "Nightmare on Elm Street." The ominous piano keys, the chick from "Just the Ten of Us", the razor blades, the shredding of sheets - feathers everywhere, fighting sleep, horribly mismatched stripes on Freddy's sweater, the burned face AAAAAAAAAHHHH I wouldn't sleep for days. And truth be told, I don’t think I would or COULD watch it now as an adult.
Matt Harper
"The Nightmare Before Christmas" -- Even as a kid I thought it was more of a Christmas movie, but still loved it to death (and definitely watched it around Halloween).
And finally... a loving tribute to Jim Varney from MTV's Joel Hanek:
Favorite Scary Movie 10.28.09
Joel Hanek
Horror movies are a dime a dozen. We all know the clichés, the formulas and what to expect when we go see a scary movie. As the years go by, the originality seems to have disappeared from the genre all together – it’s like we began to expect the unexpected in a way. It even got to a certain point of predictability that to be original it had to become self-referential, with meta-horror movies like "Scream." Sure, things can shock us and startle us yet we still expect them when we enter the theater. When is the last time something truly took you by surprise? In my opinion, the only time the fright stays with you after the movie ends is when you’ve witnessed something truly uncanny and unforeseen.
That said, the scariest movie I’ve ever seen is “Ernest Scared Stupid.” For those of you who weren’t children of the 80’s: Ernest P. Worrell, played by Jim Varney, was a bumbling character in a series of movies whose possible profession was either a janitor / mechanic / hobo / Highlander (circle one, I’m not sure, it was really never made clear). Ernest’s misadventures were filled with slapstick comedy and a lesson to be learned, showcased in such tales as "Ernest Goes to Camp," "Ernest Goes to School", "Ernest Goes to Jail," etc. – you get the picture. These were all campy, corny kids’ movies. Then there is "Ernest Scared Stupid." Here’s the description posted on IMDB.com: "After a misunderstanding, Ernest P. Worrell unleashes an evil troll on Halloween."
Here’s a more accurate description:
After a HORRIBLE misunderstanding, Ernest P. Worrell unleashes a blood-thirsty SATAN on Halloween who steals children’s souls and turns them into wood figurines in order to free his undead minion army of evil goblin terrorists.
Here’s my synopsis of this *children’s* movie: Ernest liberates a bloodthirsty troll from his underground prison by chanting an ancient spell. Said troll then terrorizes a small town suburb by BITING THE CHILDREN WHICH TURNS THEM INTO MINIATURE WOODEN FIGURINES. These petrified child statues are then used to fuel his spawning grounds for TROLL EGGS. The troll pops out from behind cars, under children’s beds, and in the school to STEAL THE CHILDREN’S SOULS. NO ONE IS SAFE.
The troll is horrifying. I don’t know if it’s the fangs or the snarling or the perpetual mucous on its face, which consist of two noses, but it gave me nightmares.
Seriously, who made the executive decision to have this in a kids movie? "Ernest Scared Stupid" wins the award for scariest movie because that inappropriate marketing accomplishes the goal of leaving you with something wholly unexpected.
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